Check me out, I read a book

Carl Hiassen Sick Puppy



The expression, "sick puppy" is pretty strange when you think about it. An actual sick puppy is pretty defenseless. They tend to just lie there. Sick puppy as an expression relates to a person who has done something, or is capable of doing something so despicable that we really only feel comfortable describing them as mental or emotionally disturbed.

The book Sick Puppy contains examples of both literal and figurative meanings of the phrase. To explain the cast of characters and why they fit the expression is a little bit of a roller coaster, which is one of the reasons the book is such an enjoyable read. Let me give it a shot. Okay, so, there’s this guy, Palmer Stoat whose a powerful lobbyist in Florida. He’s driving home from a rhinoceros hunt, when he throws a fast food wrapper out his window. This radical environmentalist with a huge trust fund sees it and follows him home to teach him a lesson. Palmer is as sharp as a bowling ball, so the rich environmentalist teaches him a number of other lessons, including removing the glass eyeballs from Palmer’s hunting trophies and arranging them in a pentagram. Palmer’s dog eats a couple of them and gets sick.  The environmentalist kidnaps the dog and Palmer’s wife Desie. Palmer’s wife points out that Palmer is lobbying for a new development which would be more of an environmental disaster than a few wrappers and so the environmentalist tries to stop it. Then the developer (who has convinced two Eastern European woman to go through extensive plastic surgery to look like twin Barbie dolls to satisfy his Barbie fetish) steps in and hires a hitman (who listens to tapes of 911 calls to relax). Later there’s a guy who lives in the Everglades and eats roadkill. That’s most of them.

My main problem with the book is in it’s marketing. This book is sold as a satire, but I don’t see that. Yes, it addresses the deals that get made in government. It points out that millions of taxpayer dollars could be diverted on the whim of a lobbyist. In that sense it is a satire. I don’t think that just because a book caricatures government as part of a larger story should be thought of a satire.

I guess what I’m getting at is that these characters would be interesting regardless of their involvement in politics. Their involvement in politics is more a reason why we should be interested, and less of an end in itself. To be honest, I didn’t really find myself caring about the politically manipulation, it was a distraction from the interaction between the sick puppies.

Evil Recommendation: Read the book, but don’t wait for the satire to start.